94 FORESTRY IN LITHUANIA. 



lying between Courland, Russia, Poland, and Prussia. In 

 the eleventh century the country was tributary to Russia ; 

 in the thirteenth it became a grand duchy under Ringold. 

 The Grand Duke Jagellan, having married the Polish 

 princess Hedwig, united his duchy to the crown of Poland 

 about the year 1386. At the first partition of Poland in 

 1773, a considerable portion of Lithuania was assigned to 

 Russia, and the governments of Mobile v and Polozk, or 

 Vitebsk, were formed out of the newly acquired territory ; 

 while the remainder of Lithuania, forming the territories 

 of Vilna, Troki, Polozk, Novogrodek, Brzesc, and Minsk, 

 remained attached to the Polish monarchy. By the 

 partition of 1793 and 1795, Russia further acquired those 

 portions of Lithuania which now form her governments 

 of Vilna, Grodno, and Minsk, while Prussia acquired that 

 portion which constituted her regency of Gumbinnan.' It 

 is the Russian portion, exclusive of this, upon which I now 

 report. 



Lithuania, like Poland, has played an important part in 

 the development of Russia, in so far at least as modifica- 

 tion of political government is concerned. In Russia at 

 the present time, we have, in combination with absolute 

 monarchal power in all that relates to national matters, 

 what looks like absolute democratic power in all that 

 relates to communal matters, and in a former day there 

 was in Russia in one district a democratic republic side by 

 side with an absolute monarchy. According to one legend 

 the real founders of the Russian monarchy were Normans 

 who found their way to the district in which is situated 

 the city of Novgorod, either coming thither by invita- 

 tion or in the prosecution of their personal pursuits. 



Of what followed Mr Mackenzie Wallace writes : 

 ' For six centuries after the so-called invitation of Rurik 

 the city on the Volkhof had a strange chequered history. 

 Rapidly it conquered the neighbouring Finnish tribes, 

 and grew into a powerful independent state, with a 

 territory extending to the Gulf of Finland, and north- 

 wards to the White Sea. At the same time its com- 



